DEATH MUNCHKIN!

A disgustingly overpowered fantasy role-playing game based on the
FUDGE
system

by Roger M. Wilcox

Last updated 3-April-2002

Legal notices:

DISCLAIMER
The following materials based on FUDGE, entitled Death Munchkin!, are
created by Roger M. Wilcox and made available by same, and are not
authorized or endorsed in any way by Steffan O'Sullivan or any
publisher of other FUDGE materials. Neither Steffan O'Sullivan or
any publisher of other FUDGE material is in any way responsible for
the content of these materials. Original FUDGE materials (c)
Copyright 1992-1995 Steffan O'Sullivan, All Rights Reserved.
ABOUT FUDGE
FUDGE is a role-playing game written by Steffan O'Sullivan, with
extensive input from the Usenet community of rec.games.design. The
basic rules of FUDGE are available on the internet via anonymous ftp
at ftp.csua.berkeley.edu, and in book form or on disk from Grey
Ghost Games, P.O. Box 838, Randolph, MA 02368. They may be used
with any gaming genre. While an individual work derived from FUDGE
may specify certain attributes and skills, many more are possible
with FUDGE. Every Game Master using FUDGE is encouraged to add or
ignore any character traits. Anyone who wishes to distribute such
material for free may do so - merely include this ABOUT FUDGE notice
and disclaimer (complete with FUDGE copyright notice). If you wish
to charge a fee for such material, other than as an article in a
magazine or other periodical, you must first obtain a royalty-free
license from the author of FUDGE, Steffan O'Sullivan, P.O. Box 465,
Plymouth, NH 03264.

The goal of the Death Munchkin! system is to out-Synnibar The World of
Synnibar, out-Aberrant Aberrant, and out-SenZar SenZar. It
provides a complete, detailed system and setting for munchkin-style role-playing
as well as eight, ahem, "adventures" to get your characters started on their quest
for power, and a random underground labyrinth generator to enable them to keep on
killing things and amassing treasure without limit. It even comes with a
small sampling of the mega-powerful creatures on other planes, for when your
characters get powerful enough to obliterate a roomful of oversized psychic vampire
dragons in three seconds flat. Characters begin at quite competent power
levels, and progress is rapid.

Little attention has been paid to making the game world into a rich, cohesive
setting. Munchkins don't care about mythical history or political intrigue or
the local economy; they're much too busy killing things and looting the corpses to
notice such trivialities. I suppose you, as the GM, could go to the
trouble of contriving a complicated setting and peopling your adventure with deep
and interesting NPCs, but they'll probably get killed the instant they meet the
player-characters anyway, so I would suggest you save yourself the heartache right
now and just concentrate on picking monsters of the appropriate toughness.

Ostensibly, the World of Death Munchkin! is supposed to vaguely resemble the
medieval-esque fantasy worlds that populate such Tolkien-like role-playing games as
AD&D and RuneQuest. However, the first question a munchkin
will ask in such a game setting, when told that he cannot start the game with a
Wand of Infinite Fireballs, is "Then can I have an AK-47?". I have attempted
to answer such deep and probing questions by providing a short list of modern and
futuristic weapons and vehicles. Pretend that there was a rip in the
spacetime continuum which allowed future technology to fall into medieval
hands. Or that the game really takes place in the distant future after the
fall of civilization and trolls are really mutants. Or something. Just
don't forget that if a player-character can get hold of a wide-angle disintegrator
pistol, this means a monster can, too....